Plastics have become an indispensable part of modern life. Their versatility in terms of physical properties, formability and cost has made plastics the material of choice for many product applications. Plastics have also become a symbol of disposability and hence an inevitable object of concern given heightened public awareness of environmental issues providing strong drivers to recycle or reuse post-consumer plastic materials and avoid disposing of them in landfills or the environment.
Polyvinylchloride (PVC) is one of the most important commodity plastics and is used in a very wide range of applications from rigid to flexible applications. In order to deliver PVC products to this wide array of end uses it is one of the most highly formulated plastics in use and a PVC part can contain up to 50% or more of other materials. These other materials can be collectively referred to additives and includes everything from mineral fillers, plasticizers, processing aids, UV stabilizers oxidative stabilizers etc.
The vast majority of plastics materials (including PVC) are made from depleting petroleum fossil resources providing a strong driver to not only reduce their consumption but to extend the use of these materials by adding non-petroleum based fillers. When using fillers such as mineral fillers like talc or calcium carbonate in polymer formulations such as PVC formulations to reduce overall system costs, the following needs to be considered. The higher the level of filler that is used, the more impaired the physical properties of the final products. In addition with fillers, in some cases it would be desirable to use higher loading of fillers in a PVC formulation not just to reduce cost but to provide some useful physical attribute in the final product. However, the higher the level of filler used the more difficult and costly it is to extrude such PVC formulations into finished products.
Therefore, there is a need to achieve higher filler loading in polymer systems, particularly, without impairing relevant physical properties of the final polymer products.